what is the benefit of having a dominant hand/leg as compared to having equally skilled limbs?
In: Biology
I think there’s a theory that one side is for fine motor skills and the other for strength based tasks. Like holding your groceries in one hand while trying to unlock your door with the other hand.
Because if you get your dominant hand chopped off you get to be like “hey I can’t do stuff” and make everybody help you, which is really great when you don’t have a hand.
Miyamoto Musashi famously used 2 swords and had to overcome this exact equation but it was seen as a huge advancement in swordsmanship.
Doesn’t exactly explain why but his record is definitely evidence that the benefit of equally skilled limbs is real I would think.
It’s also a very specific example
I’m bit of a mixed bag lol.
I write, hold a drink (beverage), eat fruit and brush my teeth with my left hand. I also wear my watch on my left arm but I throw, catch a ball and do mostly everything else with my right hand though if I were to write on a blackboard (chalkboard) I would swap between using both hands but slightly preferring my right hand.
If I’m on a skateboard I’m goofy so I have my right foot forward and push off the ground with my left also when I would jump over obstacles or slide tackle in Soccer I would favour my left side but I kick a football with my right foot.
As a young kid, I didn’t have a preferred hand. Using a variety of tactics, the nursery school teachers successfully coerced me to use my right hand. I consider myself a rightie, but it is clear that I have ambidextrous tendencies. Like, while I have more dexterity with my right, my left is much stronger. It is even larger than my right hand. My left is my “go to” hand for anything requiring brute force. My right is what I use for activities involving fine motor skills.
I like that I have this division of labor. I feel like it is a good thing, by and large. However, I am a klutz. I think perhaps I wouldn’t be so klutzy if I hadn’t been forced into right-handedness. I am left eye-dominant and left leg-dominant. My left ear is also dominant. So I think I am wired to be a leftie. One of these days I am going to try to reprogram my handedness just to see what happens. Maybe I’ll turn into the dancer I have always wanted to be!
You might also be interested in knowing that most people have a dominant eye as well where the information coming into the brain from one eye is preferred over the other eye.
I’m a bodybuilder who deals with muscular and balances from my left side to my right I’m right-handed but my left side is freakishly strong like curl 50 lb dumbbell strong when my right side can’t do that at all. It’s extremely annoying I wish I had a balanced body but I refuse to pay a chiropractor thousands of dollars to potentially screw me up worse. So it’s just long and slow physical therapy for me.
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